Making a Spectacle out of a Crisis: Glasgow’s New Housing Blitzkrieg

On 13th April Commonwealth Games 2014 organisers announced that they were dropping the demolition spectacle from the opening ceremony amid fears of “safety and security”. At a certain level we should celebrate a semblance of ‘people power’ here, after 17,000 people signed a petition to oppose the spectacle, a battery of polemic was unleashed in the media, and tenants nearby the flats said they would refuse to leave the blast-zone.

However, the Games chief executive, David Grevemberg, has said that Glasgow 2014 will still dedicate an element of the opening to telling the story of Glasgow’s social history. What kind of history will this be? Who will write it? What buffoonery can we next expect from the people who devised the Red Road debacle? More than that, the widespread decimation of public and social housing in Glasgow continues apace, and the social housing legacy for the Games and Clyde Gateway remains dismal. The Red Road Games fiasco for a short time made visible the obscene underside of Glasgow’s ‘urban renaissance’. Let’s keep that in sight.

I was converted to co-operative housing by reading Blossom. I already am a member of a credit union in Canada. Sadly When I returned to Scotland I needed a bank in a hurry and until I got settled. So I opened an account at a Big Bank until I can join a credit union. My wife and I were members of the Co-operative Society when living in Canada. I think that the co-operative philosophy is, for me, an expression of my Christian faith.